David Sirota: Some Personal News

[brooklynite]

Friends:

I wanted to let you know that I have accepted a job serving as Senator Bernie Sanders' senior adviser and speechwriter on his campaign for president.

I have spent more than a decade working as a columnist and journalist, and I am grateful to Capital & Main and Newsweek/IBT for giving me the opportunity to do investigative reporting at a level that won journalism awards and made real change. I believe journalism is an extremely important and necessary line of work, and I will miss it (and one day in the future, it is possible I may return to it).

However, when Bernie asked me to join his campaign, I felt I could not turn that request down, because I genuinely believe that the future of our country, our planet and our children are at stake in this election.

As many of you know, I worked for Bernie 20 years ago, just after I got out of college when he was in the U.S. House. This was a formative experience for me. So in addition to knowing that this job is an important contribution to a national effort, I am personally thrilled to be working for one of the most decent and honorable people I've ever known. This new job was not something I expected or planned for -- but it is something I am excited to do.

I want to express my deepest thanks to all of you who have supported my journalism work over the years -- your support has meant so much to me, especially in those times when my work has generated blowback from the powerful.

For the foreseeable future, I will be shutting down this newsletter and my podcast. I will also be halting my monthly column with the Guardian. If you would like to reach me, you can email me at [e-mail]. You can also find me on Twitter at @davidsirota or on Facebook.

Rock the boat,
David

[dalton99a]

1. Now, advise him to release the tax returns

when he's not busy, of course

[R B Garr]

2. LOL, exactly!

No double standards or special treatment. Show us the taxes.

[Docreed2003]

3. Well that should be a plus for Bernie

I was a Bernie supporter in '16 but it got old listening to the exact same stump speech again and again and again, no matter how much I may have believed in the message.

Perhaps Sirota can help to mix it up a bit for Bernie and keep it fresh.

[BannonsLiver]

6. By mixing it up do you mean slurring the other candidates in the race with lies?

I suspect Sirota will be quite good in that role. He’s been doing it to actual Dems for years.

[Docreed2003]

10. ...

By mixing it up, I meant maybe Bernie would say something different than the same repeating record stump speech after stump speech. Nearly every damn campaign spot was the same speech again and again and again...so much so I think many here could have given the speech for him!

(And I was being snarky in my post my friend, I'm no fan of Sirota or his bullshit attacks on Biden, Beto and essentially anyone not named Bernie)

[BannonsLiver]

5. Sounds like Bernie is loading up to go scorched earth in the primary.

When you hire a viscious, proven liar like Sirota who has zero ethics you’re not doing it to play patty cake. This will be ugly, folks.

[dalton99a]

8. It's typical Bernie, and again Trump will be the net beneficiary

[R B Garr]

13. Not again, and not with this many Democrats to smear.

Sanders will get caught up in his own nasty web trying to harm that many Democrats.

[Nanjeanne]

7. Well he isn't David Brock so I'm happy!

[Hassin Bin Sober]

19. How 'bout it. The rank hypocrisy of people outraged at this is laughable.

[Nanjeanne]

20. So much pearl clutching. It's like a job for some. You would think it would be more

fun to just support a candidate than spend so much time despising another. Go figure!

[George II]

24. Hypocrisy? Do you have anything to say about this?

Link to tweet

[NurseJackie]

28. Apparently not.

[George II]

23. Who is David Brock?

[Gothmog]

9. Who is surprised by this?

Sirota has been working for the sanders campaign for a long time.

[ehrnst]

11. I guess among all the many qualified women that he's recently discovered to hire

apparently none were quite what he was looking for in the way of messaging or speechwriting.

Sirota is that in spades, unsurprisingly.

[Gothmog]

12. Sirota scrubbed his twitter feed but this remains

Link to tweet

[dalton99a]

14. A real journalist, my ass

[ehrnst]

15. Looks like Sirota has some baggage he doesn't want his name on.

I believe that the internet doesn't let people keep those things deleted for long, however.

It will be very interesting to see what people dig up about Sirota's previous 20,000+ tweets that he deleted today.

[Gothmog]

16. Here is one of the deleted tweets

Link to tweet

[Politicub]

31. Deleting tweets -- Is that like being born again?

He was baptized in the cool spray of Bernie's mist. May it cover all of us.

[Gothmog]

17. More deleted tweets

Link to tweet

[NurseJackie]

21. So, on ELECTION EVE Sirota was working to "kneecap" Hillary.

We're talking WAY past the primary and WAY past the convention... this fellow was STILL working to "kneecap" Hillary. The contest was over, and he was LITERALLY doing everything he could to HELP TRUMP to win.

I think that speaks very clearly about his moral compass and tells us a lot about him (and it's not at all flattering.) I think it's fair for anyone to question the judgement and motivation of anyone who would hire him for ANY job.

Link to tweet

[oasis]

22. Sirota hits Hillary a day before Election 2016 and surely cost her

valuable votes.

I shudder to think what the motivation might be, but I have a pretty good idea.

[Gothmog]

18. Who is surprised by this?

Link to tweet

[Skidmore]

25. Another good reason

not to vote for BS: Sirota.

[Maru Kitteh]

26. He was pretending to be a "journalist" for months while working for BS,

writing speeches and trashing Democrats with smears.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/sanders-promised-civility-hired-twitter-attack-dog/585259/

Since December, David Sirota has, on Twitter, on his own website, and in columns in The Guardian, been trashing most of Sanders’s Democratic opponents—all without disclosing his work with Sanders—and has been pushing back on critics by saying that he was criticizing the other Democrats as a journalist. He centered many of his attacks on Beto O’Rourke, but he also bashed Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet, John Hickenlooper, Mike Bloomberg, and even Andrew Cuomo.

It's DISHONEST of Sirota, and more importantly, it's dishonest to suddenly announce this "hire" when the person has been working secretly for some time already.

[still_one]

27. Hey David, tell us who you voted for in the general elections in 2016, and why are you so busy

erasing your twitter feeds?

[Tipperary]

30. I cannot help but wonder who Bernie voted for. Got an idea who it probably wasn't.

Wonder how those tax returns are coming?

[Gothmog]

29. Washington Post-A Bernie Sanders supporter (and journalist) had a secret he kept from his readers

Link to tweet

A reporter’s undisclosed connection to a political candidate would constitute a breach of journalistic ethics. The basic rule is that journalists are supposed to be free of any personal or financial relationship with those they cover or comment on, even an “informal” relationship. Alternatively, reporters are obligated to at least disclose such relationships so that readers or viewers can evaluate the integrity of the reporting for themselves.

Sirota, 43, not only didn’t mention his relationship with Sanders’s campaign but apparently sought to erase his long history of attacks against Sanders’s opponents, according to the Atlantic. Just hours before his hiring by Sanders was announced, Sirota deleted about 20,000 or so of his tweets. He suggested that the timing of the mass deletion was coincidental, telling the Atlantic that his account was scrubbed by an “autodeleter” that periodically and automatically removes his posts.

It remains unclear how long Sirota advised the Sanders camp before his hiring. Neither Sirota nor Sanders’s representatives responded to multiple requests for comment on Wednesday.

Sirota’s vitriolic tweets and blog posts also appear to be at odds with the ethos of the Sanders’s campaign, which has stressed that it will “respectfully engage” other Democratic candidates. His hiring as a speechwriter also appears to be an acknowledgment that Sanders, whose extemporaneous public remarks have been a sign of his authenticity, will at times be scripted like other politicians.